Something in the Air Is there anything really wrong with Airborne? "Claim your refund for useless Airborne cold supplement," wrote one Internet blogger. But "useless"? Is that fair? Airborne executives were recently ordered to pay more than $23 million in a class action suit that boils down to this: They made claims about their product that were not sufficiently backed up by reliable studies. Well, when you play the supplement game you've got to play by the rules. But still - is Airborne actually useless? In a word: No. But is it good value? In the midst of all the recent Airborne publicity, I checked the ingredients of this popular product. And while I wasn't surprised to find vitamin C, I WAS surprised that a single tablet of airborne contains a full gram of vitamin C. Other nutrients are on the low side, but still, you've got a gram of C in what would seem to be a highly absorbable form. Of course, C can't support your immune system all by itself. So I sent a copy of the Airborne "Supplement Facts" label to HSI Panelist Allan Spreen, M.D., and he responded with an excellent lowdown on Airborne. Dr. Spreen: "I looked at Airborne ingredients panel long ago and was pretty unimpressed. The vitamin C, as you said, is definitely reasonable, plus the delivery vector is excellent. The amounts for the rest (A, zinc, E, magnesium, zinc, selenium, manganese, potassium) aren't much, really, nor is the amount of the amino acids (though these are well-selected agents, in my opinion). "The herbs (Lonicera, Forsythia, Schizonepeta, Ginger, Chinese Vitex, Isatis Root, Echinacea) are organic, and 350 milligram total isn't too bad. Plus, the selection appears decent (if somewhat over my head, except for Vitex and Echinacea), though the breakdown of the 'proprietary' 350 mg is unknown. "All in all, I might have tried such a product, had it not been for the Sorbitol, Mineral Oil, Sucralose and Acesulfame-K; those 'other ingredients' pretty much do it for me." Sorbitol, sucralose, and acesulfame-K are artificial sweeteners, and mineral oil is a petroleum byproduct with a laxative effect. All of these ingredients are included in the "original" Airborne product. Other products (such as Airborne Jr., Airborne On-the-Go, Airborne Gummi Lozenges, etc.) contain slightly different blends of vitamins, herbs, and "other ingredients." If a supplement doesn't pass the Spreen test, that's enough for me. But let's say you don't mind a few artificial sweeteners and maybe you sort of enjoy drinking the effervescent Airborne. Drink two each day and you'll get two grams of vitamin C. What's wrong with that? Well, for one thing, it's going to cost you. If you order Airborne from the Airborne web site, the original formula costs $43.99 for six tubes which contain 10 Airborne tablets per tube. That's about 73 cents per tablet! The vitamin C I'm currently taking costs less than 15 cents per gram. Of course, my vitamin C doesn't deliver the rest of the Airborne formula, but we don't know if that formula is actually effective enough to deliver substantial benefits. Dr. Spreen told me that if he were going to try an Airborne type product, he'd choose Airborne's all-natural competitor: Wellness Fizz. Like Airborne, Wellness Fizz comes in a tube (11 tablets), contains a gram of vitamin C, a proprietary blend of herbs, and is fairly low on other vitamins. The key difference? Wellness Fizz is sweetened with stevialeaf and honey - no artificial sweeteners. And one source I found charges just $3.56 per tube. That's still considerably more than my vitamin C, but it's less than half the cost of Airborne. I've never tried Wellness Fizz so I can't recommend it. And I certainly don't plan to make it my go-to source for vitamin C. But if you ever take a peek inside my medicine cabinet I'll tell you what you won't find there: Airborne. | 
